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“I wonder,” Yumi says, lying on her belly over the covers of the dorm bed. Terano looks up from the notes she's making on her laptop. It's late; she should be sleeping, but she doesn't think she'll be able to rest. Not when she's in Hyakkaou, under someone else’s mercy for once. Kirari has a shark’s smile, and a love for convoluted architecture, and Terano can’t manage to rest her guard here in the heart of Kirari’s machinations. It scares her more than she’d like to admit, being in Kirari’s territory. If this were a fairy tale, this would be the castle surrounded by robotic with faux smiles, a trapdoor at every turn and the heroine armed with nothing but her wits.
But this isn’t a fairy tale and she’s not sure she’s the heroine, and she can’t guarantee her story will get her the ending she wants. At least she’s not alone. She has her cousins, self-involved as they might be, and she has Yumi. She hopes that will be enough, when it comes down to it.
“You wonder?” asks Terano. Yumi’s caught up in her own thoughts now, and needs to be prodded every once in a while to share. It's an admirable quality, Terano thinks: to be able to lose yourself in your imagination and forget the reality in front of you, at least for a time. It’s not one she herself can ever afford to have.
“Yeah, I was thinking about you and happiness,” Yumi says, and shifts around in the bed until she's making upside-down eye contact with Terano, hanging her head off the bed to make it work.
Terano tilts her head, smiling despite the anxiety bubbling in her chest. “Yeah?”
Yumi rolls off the edge and lands gracefully; a dancer’s grace, and Terano thinks about all those years ago, Yumi shivering and clumsy with the cold, and marvels at how much Yumi has grown since then. How happy she is now.
“So, Miss Terano Totobami,” Yumi begins, putting on a reporter’s affect, holding an imaginary microphone out to Terano. “Breaking news! The world has been saved, all because of your hard work and effort! Years of working in the shadows and now, the last deal has been made.”
“Yumi, please ,” but she's laughing; she doesn't mean it, she could never find it in herself to chide Yumi for her antics. Yumi beams at her instead, and perches on the side of the desk, careful not to jostle Terano’s laptop in the slightest. She holds her hand out again, still clenched as if it held a microphone.
“You're a star! You did it! You made everyone happy. You won. What, now, will you be doing next?”
Terano scoffs. “Like our family would ever last a day like that.” Especially with nothing to do, she thinks. The Inbamis and Yobamis would probably find an excuse to be at each other’s throats, and who knows what the Obamis would get up to in the meantime. If Kirari were in her place, she knows, that girl would just be sitting from afar and watching the fallout. Ugh.
“Aw, Terano! C’mon, think about it! What would you do if you just… did it?” Yumi scratches her head, abandoning her interviewing act. “Like in those stories you like so much. What happens after you get everyone their happily ever after?”
“If I just… did it,” she muses. What happens when her story reaches its end? It’s an unfamiliar thought; she’s chased the idea of happiness for so long that actually picturing it in her future is so foreign. There's always more to be done, she wants to tell Yumi. Happiness isn't self-perpetuating; there's always more disagreements, more discord growing, more rifts that split the family apart, and she's the only one who knows how to keep it in check, and she can't be done , because then who is she when she's not bringing balance?
What will you do next? What is there left to do? What more could she do, after everyone had found their equilibrium? She shrugs. “I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
Yumi’s eyes are kind, but there’s something sad behind her gaze, and Terano hates that she was the one that put it there.
“I know what I’d do!” Yumi says brightly in lieu of a response. “I wanna get one of those helicopters, you know, the ones Kirari and Ririka always use? Just get in one, fly around. See how everything looks from far away.”
A helicopter ride. Something so simple to wish for, but right now it sounds like the most unobtainable thing in the world. They’ve both been in helicopters before, of course, but always on business matters. Family matters. To just be able to leave the ground and just fly over the city, unhindered by her responsibilities? It sounds… nice.
What would she do, if she could leave her position as the Totobami family representative? If she could leave her cousins alone for a while without worrying they’d cause a nationwide dispute when her back was turned? If she could just stop working and not have to concern herself with providing for everyone else?
“It would be nice,” she says, sounding out the words slowly. “To… get away from it all.” To just leave them all behind, uncaring of the consequences for once in her life. She wonders if that is what vacation is supposed to be like. She wonders if this is what Kirari feels like sometimes when she moves her pieces at a whim, uncaring how they tipped the scales.
It feels, almost, like a betrayal.
Balance, above all else. Family is everything. Their family is a delicate bonsai tree, only surviving because of its constant attention and care. Oh, how badly she wants to leave her role. How much she knows she never can. The heroine in the story can’t just leave whenever she wants to; she has people to protect. What would happen to her family in her absence? What would happen to Yumi?
“Terano.”
Yumi’s eyes are on hers, and she reaches out a steadying hand inches away from Terano’s own. Terano grabs back, realizing how tense she's become, and settles her breathing in time with Yumi's until her heartbeat feels normal in her chest again.
“Someday,” Yumi says firmly, “we’ll go on a helicopter ride. We’ll fly all over Japan. We won’t land until we’re ready to come back down.”
That’s not how it works, she wants to say, but Yumi knows that, and it’s a nice fantasy all the same. It doesn’t sound like running away when Yumi says it, but something softer.
Wind blows outside their open window, and the sound of the trees reminds her of home. It settles something in her, quietly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah! I mean, if you want to go. But I’d like you with me. I always was happiest when I was with you.” Yumi grins at her, wide and easy, and Terano feels the last of her tension leave her chest.
“I’d like that, Yumi.” She closes the laptop. “Let’s go to sleep.”
Yumi hops neatly off the desk and bounces back into bed in a single bound, wriggling under the covers until she’s comfortable. Terano follows behind, wheeling to her own bed. As she’s maneuvering herself in, Yumi yawns. “Terano?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll do it, you know. Win. Get happily ever after.”
Terano feels a smile stretch across her face. Even half-asleep, Yumi says it with such unadulterated confidence that, for once, Terano’s inclined to believe her. Despite all her misgivings, despite everything, it sounds possible. It all sounds so much more hopeful when Yumi says it.
“Good night, Yumi.”
“G’night, Terano.”
Terano turns off the lamp and closes her eyes, and lets the dream of a happier future carry her into sleep.